Alyssa's Social Problems Blog

This blog will be discussing the topic of children, families, and schools. All such a huge aspect of millions of people's lives daily! These three things affect social lives tremendously, in some ways we might not even realize. Looking at the functionalism perspective , this provides us with the simple idea that family, schools, and children all perform several essential functions to society. Whether it's socializing children or providing them with a "social identity". The conflict theory suggests that family contributes to social inequalities through economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. Not only this, but often times we see family being a source of conflict in itself. This is infamously shown through physical violence, emotional trauma, financial cruelty, etc. The symbolic theory proposes that the interaction of family members and couples involves shared understandings of their situations. Furthermore, it goes on to suggest that husbands and wives ca...

This blog will be focused on crime and criminal justice. Crime can be defined as behavior prohibited by the criminal law because it is considered to be especially harmful or offensive. But how does crime tie into the sociological perspectives? There is different theories regarding crime for each of the perspectives. Looking at the functionalism perspective, there is social disorganization and anomie. Social disorganization suggests that certain social characteristics like poverty, population, dilapidation, etc. contribute to high crime rates. Anomie  proposes that crime by the poor results from a gap between the cultural emphasis on economic success and the inability to achieve such success. Conflict perspective theories include group conflict, radical, and feminist. These theories give the idea that crime can be the result of social groups, wealth, and gender. The symbolic theories provide the ideas of differential association, labeling, and social bonding. Looking at the NCVS Cri...

 This blog is going to be covering alcohol and other drugs. Drug use has been common since ancient times in almost every society. We can date alcoholic drinks all the way back to 8000 BCE, and drugs such as marijuana back to 3000 BCE. This blog is going to be focused around the sociological perspectives and the trends we see in society involving alcohol and drugs.  The functionalism perspective provides the idea that drug use is functional for many parties in society. It gives drug users the various effects, sellers income, jobs for the criminal justice system, and so on. The conflict theory proposes that a lot of the drug use in poor urban areas is caused by poverty, inequality, etc. The symbolic interactionism theory suggests that drug use arises from an individual's interaction with people who engage in drug use. Furthermore, it states that an individual learns how to use a drug and learns attitudes to make it justifiable.  I am going to be looking at the data about m...

 In this blog, I'll be talking about the social problems people face still often today regarding aging, health, and medicine. Whether it's through age, race, gender, etc., these are real problems that real people struggle with every day, not just something we read about. Looking back on the sociological perspectives, we can see how they're involved in this topic as well. Starting of with functionalism, the patient and doctor roles are required to fulfill this perspective. There must be a "sick role", the patient, for a doctor to do their job in providing the care. If nobody ever got sick, hurt, or ill, we wouldn't really need doctors; therefore, supporting the perspective of this functioning society.  Moving on to the conflict theory, which is supported by social inequality. This is unfortunately seen a lot in people getting sick or even the quality of the care they receive. Lastly, the symbolic interactionism theory, claiming that health and illness are just ...

The most interesting sociological theoretical perspective to me is the conflict theory . The conflict theory is the idea that social problems arise from social groups based upon race, gender, social class, etc. Social problems arise when these powerful groups compete for power, wealth, status, and so on. This appeals to me the most because looking at our society today, it almost seems apparent. It seems as though so many people, especially the individuals that are quite high in society, like politicians, celebrities, are fighting for the most power and money. When certain groups come together, they may often find themselves doing things to benefit them, while hurting others. For example, education inequality , in the sense that schools in wealthier communities tend to get more funding than more lower class areas.   Gallup Poll-Guns Looking at the results of the poll when asked about gun laws, roughly 60% felt as though they should be more strict. On the other hand, 12% believe...